LAST April, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared Naxalism as the ‘biggest internal challenge’ ever faced by India when outlining his government’s response to the emerging situation – effective policing accompanied by a simultaneous focus on reducing a sense of deprivation and alienation among different sections of society.

Though the prime minister’s unambiguous assertion was shorn of the usual ‘double speak’ of a politician, the counter-revolutionary strategies being implemented in different parts of India leave little doubt that the ‘military’ solution far outweighs the ‘development-oriented’ one.

A key element of the solution enunciated by Manmohan Singh was to ‘walk-on-two-legs’, wherein the military and development solutions are to be implemented simultaneously. On many an occasion, chief ministers of naxalism-affected states have also spoken on similar lines – that of tackling the problem on a socioeconomic plane.

But the systematic spread of the left wing extremist (LWE) movement only underscores the mismatch between the military and civil solutions in the overall context of a counter-revolutionary strategy being employed across India. The rapid expansion of revolutionary activity, especially in the last five years, is certainly a cause for concern. From merely being an irritant in isolated pockets in far-flung forest areas in some states just a decade ago, India has suddenly woken up to the reality of revolutionary activity engulfing more than a quarter of the country’s geographical expanse.

The Government of India recently disclosed that 162 districts in 14 states out of a total of 602 districts in the country have been affected by extremism of varying intensities. Of the affected districts, the revolutionary movement is intense in 90 districts, while the remaining districts have seen mass organization activity/underground squad movements, but not revolutionary violence.

The spatial spread of the Maoist movement has surpassed all other insurgent activity in the country. The terrorist activity in Jammu and Kashmir is confined to 12 districts, while insurgency in the North East is confined to 51 districts.

The spurt in revolutionary activity in the country can be attributed to three chief causes: the inability of a democratic polity to put an end to the exploitative structures in society, official inefficiency in expediting processes intended to help the downtrodden, and the unification of revolutionary forces by sinking their ideological differences.

On 21 September 2004, two major revolutionary parties guided by Marxist-Leninist-Maoist (MLM) principles – the Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCCI) and the CPI-ML People’s War (PW) – merged to form the Communist Party of India (Maoist).

 

The consolidation that led to an expansion of the sphere of revolutionary activity began in 1997. Various splinter groups working within the framework of the MLM ideology like the CPI (ML) Maoist Unity Centre (CPI-ML-MUC), merged with the CPI-ML Naxalbari. Later, another splinter group, the CPI (ML) Red Flag merged with CPI-ML Naxalbari. The Revolutionary Communist Centre of India (Maoist), operating in Punjab had earlier united with the then Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) to form the MCCI. The Bihar-based Party Unity (PU) had merged with the CPI-ML People’s War, which was active in Andhra Pradesh. There are enough indications that another splinter group operating in Andhra Pradesh, Janashakti, is now likely to merge with the CPI-Maoist.

The unification of the MLM ideology-driven splinter groups is a phenomenon that has gathered momentum in the last five years. The earlier period was marked by repeated splits among the revolutionary parties. Consequently, their area of operation was confined to a few pockets, not more than a few villages in a district in some cases. But concerted efforts by the ideologues of various parties to consolidate and spread the red influence seem to have now succeeded.

To use the oil-spot analogy, various Naxal groups operating in isolation and facing the threat of liquidation by brute state force have joined together, just like oil spots on a water surface join to form a large slick. In effect, the Maoist cadres have not only increased their area of activity, but also their cadre and sympathizer base.

While respective state governments have underestimated the importance of the consolidation exercises, dubbing them as acts of desperation to revive a ‘decadent’ movement, the amalgamation and consolidation of revolutionary activity over a period of time proves that there certainly is a ‘method in the madness’. The architects of revolution are not only bringing newer areas into the revolutionary fold, but determined efforts are underway to reclaim areas where the naxalite movement had been crushed. A good example is West Bengal, where the movement originated, and of course Andhra Pradesh.

 

West Bengal, where naxalism was crushed in the ’70s has seen a spectacular rebirth of the movement. Presently, 15 districts of West Bengal are affected with the Maoist problem. While Purulia, Bunkura and West Midnapore are badly affected, the Maoists have made steady progress in Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, Coochbihar, Malda, Murshidabad and Burdwan. In a state like Uttar Pradesh, so far unaffected by any revolutionary activity, Chandauli, Mirzapur and Sonebhadra are now classified as naxal-affected. Uttaranchal faces problems in Nainital, Almora, Champawat, Pittorgarh and Uddhamsingh Nagar districts. Karnataka, untouched till recently, now faces acute problems in Chikmagalur, Udipi, Shimoga, Gulbarga, Tumkur and Gulbarga districts. Tamil Nadu, which turned out to be the main rocket launcher making centre for the Maoists, has witnessed revolutionary activity in Dharmapuri, Salem, Coimbatore and Madurai.

 

Even as the Maoists made untiring efforts to unite and expand their area of activity, the state too did not lag behind in seeking to tackle the problem. The Centre, which so far had limited its role to merely sanctioning funds and despatching central para military forces (CPMF), has now begun taking a pro-active stand in coordinating counter-revolutionary measures across India. It has formed a separate cell in the Ministry of Home Affairs manned by a senior IAS officer to coordinate all counter-revolutionary measures. An Empowered Group of Ministers (EgoM) is to be formed shortly to oversee the overall developmental programmes being initiated under various schemes.

Thousands of crores are being pumped into schemes like the Backward Districts Initiative (BDI) as part of the Rashtriya Sam Vikas Yojana, National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (NREGP), Backward Regions Grant Fund (BRGF), and Pradhan Mantri Grameen Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), to name a few. There is no dearth of programmes intended ‘to fill the critical gaps’ and to take up projects intended to assimilate the target groups of tribals living in forests, where there is no semblance of governance. Sufficient funds too have been committed to the programmes, but it’s their implementation that leaves much to be desired.

But clearly, the focus is more ‘battalion-oriented’ than ‘development-oriented’. The parameters for gauging the efficacy of the states’ response to the Maoist issue is to merely look at the increase or decrease in violence by naxals, and the number of naxalites ‘neutralised’ or arrested. The annual reports of the Ministry of Home Affairs stand testimony to this approach. While elaborate details are given indicating the levels of violence in a bid to project the trajectory of the Maoist movement, allocation of funds to various programmes is mentioned in a ritualistic manner.

 

The ‘militaristic approach’ adopted by the Centre and state governments in assessing the field level situation, is perhaps extremely convenient to the ruling parties, since a military statistics-driven assessment would emphatically lead to planning on a military plane. The execution of development-oriented programmes is naturally placed at a secondary level. Consequently, the parameters of judging the efficacy or failure of counter-revolutionary measures essentially foreground the number of offences committed by naxalites or the frequency of ‘exchange of fire’ between security forces and naxalites, casualties, weapons seized or snatched.

That official statistics do not necessarily represent the actual situation is evident from the field, where the Maoists employ a deadly mixture of politico-socio-military-economic strategies after a careful analysis of the field-level situation. The mismatch becomes all the more glaring when the state employs counter-revolutionary strategies that are out of sync with the field reality. Hence the confusion which pushes the state into such a helpless condition that it opts to follow the shotgun theory – that of firing a shotgun into a mob to get a wanted person, while accepting a few civilian casualties in the process.

Such a dangerous trend of being forced to accept a shotgun approach is visible in all the states now afflicted with the Maoist problem. Perhaps, this is a reason why chief ministers look to the Indian Air Force (IAF) to conduct ‘surgical strikes’ against Maoist bases in forest areas. Little do the politicians realize that the success of the revolutionary activist lies in forcing the ‘enemy’ (the state) to resort to excesses, which in turn would further alienate the masses from the perpetrator of the excesses. The more people get distanced from the institutions of governance, the more relevance they are likely to find in an alternative red politics. On a strategic plane, the game is extremely simple. The relevance of revolutionary politics is inversely proportional to the perceived efficacy of the state, which tries to act in accordance with the principles of a democratic polity.

And then the big question that remains unanswered! Why don’t governments succeed in tackling the issue despite identifying the problems, schemes being drawn, funds allocated and suitable administrative mechanisms formed to implement them?

 

Andhra Pradesh is perhaps the best example today of where the military option succeeded, while political strategies failed to tackle the Maoists. Naxalite activity has abated, the red violence registered a downward trend and the state clearly enjoys an upper hand over the Maoist cadres, who have been forced to retreat deep into the jungles, unable to match the might of the police, especially the Grey Hounds, an elite commando force raised by Andhra Pradesh to exclusively deal with the problem.

On a political plane, however, there has been a marked absence of effort by any political party, be it the Congress currently ruling the state, or the Telugu Desam (which ruled for nine years) to counter the Maoist political propaganda. At no point did these political parties in power manage to match the political arguments of the Maoists. The Communists did counter the Maoist political arguments, but their area of operations is somewhat limited.

 

While the Maoists have always presented convincing political arguments on a range of social and economic issues, be it the inability of the government to rehabilitate people being evacuated for constructing irrigation projects, or suicides of farmers and weavers, the politicians do not have any effective counter-argument to convince the masses that their way of tackling the emerging problem provides the correct solution. In other words, on a political plane, there is no answer to the disturbing questions raised by the Maoists.

Moreover, the ‘success’ of military strategies being employed by the security forces obviate the need for taking on the Maoists on a political plane. This inability to engage the Maoists politically in an ideological discussion is practically absent in the political sphere save for the Marxists. But that said, the LWE movement is on the rise even in West Bengal.

If this is by and large the political scenario vis-a-vis the naxalite movement in the country, a detailed study of the success of AP in ‘containing’ the naxalite problem is necessary to understand the state’s response to the problem.

Though technically 22 of 23 districts have been classified as naxalite affected in AP, Maoist cadres are literally on the run in most areas, except the agency areas of East Godavari, Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram and Srikakulam districts which border Orissa.

In the late 1990s, the revolutionary movement in the North Telangana (NT) districts of Adilabad, Nizamabad, Karimnagar, Warangala and Khammam, was on the verge of advancing from a ‘strategic stalemate’ to a ‘strategic offensive’ stage. Left wing extremist activity in NT districts repeatedly found place in the strategy documents of naxalites. Even the top-leadership of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), including Prachanda and Baburam Bhattarai, studied the NT movement when the Himalayan kingdom was witnessing the birth of revolution. The adjacent South Telangana districts were in the ‘preparatory’ stage of a guerrilla zone, while Nallamala forest and the North coastal districts bordering Orissa and Chhattisgarh were also in a similar phase. Andhra was the beacon of revolution in India and its concept of an ‘area-wise seizure of power’ was almost a success in the state.

 

A brutal and relentless crackdown, the singular characteristic of which was the success of ‘intelligence-driven’ operations, resulted in the liquidation of top naxal leaders, and a situation where the Maoists were forced to move back to the ‘strategic defensive’ stage. They had to roll back their operations in NT areas by 2003. However, the LWE movement picked up momentum in the rest of the state. But within the last three years, the police managed to hit back using the same strategy and the Maoists presently are in a ‘self-preservation’ mode, despite their ability to pull off some military operations like attacks on police stations, or killing ‘soft targets’ like the MLAs and their relatives.

The Andhra Pradesh strategy of ‘containing’ the revolutionary movement has been successful, so to speak, on another count as well. The state managed to crush mass organization activity through the use of ‘civil vigilante’ groups it had carefully encouraged. Groups of surrendered naxalites under the names of ‘Cobras’ and ‘Tigers’, covertly supported by the police, resorted to killing leaders of mass organizations and civil rights activists. The ‘fear psychosis’ created among the workers of these organizations, which have ideological similarities with the naxalites, has forced them into silence. The success of the Andhra Pradesh strategy is now sought to be replicated in other naxal-affected states.

 

Coinciding with the ‘containment’ strategy of the police, there have been other developments too. The official machinery was galvanized to act and take up developmental activity, though such efforts were never portrayed as part of counter-revolutionary operations. Janma Bhoomi, the pet scheme of former Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, moved the administration to the villagers’ doorsteps; the Joint Forest Management (JFM) provided an opportunity for people to protect the forests and enjoy its benefits, and a somewhat effective surrender policy enabled some naxals to join the mainstream.

Most importantly, two vital segments of society, students and workers, have drifted away from revolutionary politics for a variety of reasons. The student community has become more ‘career-oriented’ and the youngsters are concentrating on their personal development. Even as this social change was under-way, there is a perceptible shift in the support base among the workers segment too.

Though the naxalites did not succeed in spreading their activity to industrial areas or in the state-owned road transport corporation or railways, they were extremely successful in organizing a workers movement among the coal miners. But sound management policies that resulted in a turn around of the coal industry, saw this important segment too slip away from the Maoist fold.

If these factors contributed to ‘contain’ the LWE problem in Andhra, policy-makers seem to ignore the non-military aspect of AP’s experience while devising counter-revolutionary strategies for the rest of the country. When a general observation is made about replicating the AP strategy, policy-makers tend to copy only the military model, while ignoring other crucial societal developments of their causative factors.

 

Interestingly, the socioeconomic conditions that provided a perfect plat-form for revolutionary politics to grow in Andhra Pradesh during the ’80s, can now be observed in other states. Be it Bihar or Jharkhand, where the naxalite movement is extremely strong, or Chhattisgarh, where half the state is more or less under the control of Maoists, the conditions remain the same. In addition to these social causes, it is the soundness of Maoist strategies and tactics which provides a resilience to the revolutionary movement.

The Maoist movement in India can presently be classified into three phases – organisation phase, guerrilla warfare phase and mobile warfare phase. The situation is complicated as the revolutionary movement is extremely resilient and capable of sliding back to a lower phase or moving ahead into a higher phase, depending on the state’s response on military and civil development planks.

Andhra Pradesh is the best example that can be cited for scaling down revolutionary activity. It was in the mobile warfare stage with the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army almost running a parallel government in some areas, when the party leadership took a conscious decision to scale down to the organization stage and cadres were asked to give top priority to their security and start mobilizing people on various issues. The concept of area-wise seizure of power stems from this guerrilla strategy.

 

In the Organisation stage, Maoist cadres concentrate on building up agitations on people’s issues and violence is extremely selective (strategic defensive). In the guerrilla phase, the revolutionaries see themselves to be on an equal footing with the state and fight for area domination. This is the stage where violence reaches a crescendo, as the rebels use shoot-and-scoot attacks on security forces (strategic stalemate). The mobile warfare phase is one where the rebels control the area and the security forces are forced to be on permanent guard (strategic offensive).

It is difficult to demarcate the areas state-wise, as there is bound to be a large overlap among the three phases. However, the LWE movement in the Bastar forest areas of Chhattisgarsh is undoubtedly in the mobile warfare stage, where revolutionaries and people’s militia clearly have an upper hand over the security forces.

While the guerrilla phase can be seen in parts of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Orissa and West Bengal, the organization stage is visible in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Uttaranchal and parts of Andhra.

Ideally, governments should base their response on a correct assessment of the field level situation. Any inconsistent response would only further alienate people and is bound to be counterproductive.

 

The current scenario in India reflects the wrong application of counter-strategies in almost all the states. The root cause of this is that policy-makers primarily focus on tackling the Maoist problem on a military plane and blindly ask the affected states to follow examples like the Andhra Pradesh model without correcting the mistakes committed by the state. The social and economic changes that are being ushered in for a variety of reasons, the liberalization, privatization and globalization programmes, are not being factored in when similar strategies are proposed elsewhere.

Moreover, the apparent unanimity among policy-makers in employing military tactics to counter the spread of a revolutionary movement, is conspicuously absent when it comes to the political strategy to be adopted in response to the issues being raised by the Maoists on a ‘political plane’.

The political leadership is neither ready nor willing to answer the questions raised by the Maoists in respect of people’s issues at large – be it what they see as ‘gross injustice’ meted out to the tribal population in respect of setting up heavy industries in forest areas, or displacement of people owing to industrial activity. Even in social conflict zones like the Khairlanji in Maharashtra, there is little effort by the political leadership to reassure society that a democratic polity can indeed provide effective solutions to the people’s problems. Consequently, if even a minuscule section of society finds relevance in revolutionary politics, the blame squarely lies with the politician and administrator. And that’s where naxalism finds its growing support base.